“And it is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  And that includes you.”

It feels like yesterday and it feels like a hundred years ago.  If I think about it for even a minute, my body responds to it again.  That gnawing in my gut and feeling like I can’t take a full breath and being so fucking tired all the time. I felt so fucking desperate, ready to do anything.  Anything.  Desperate for the next few minutes I could steal with her, desperate to just tell her, just say it.  Saying it to myself, out loud, just to hear the words. Crazy thoughts like putting her in my car and driving away with her.  Desperate to kick Roy’s sorry ass just because it would feel so good to feel my fist crash against his face and have him hit me back.  Crazy. 

I could take a few moments, moments that felt like magic, like it was real and really happening, and live on them for weeks.  Lying awake at night, reliving everything she said and how it felt to have her look at me like she really meant it but it would always turn dark and cold and bitter.  I tried to see how long I could go without remembering she wasn’t really mine and sometimes I could last until a few hours before the alarm would go off.  Wrap myself around a pillow and try to feel her in my arms.  Imagine whole conversations in my head.  I would try, so stupid, to mentally force my thoughts into her head, make her dream my dreams. A couple times, I actually thought we met up in my dreams where I would tell her and she would say okay, you’re right, I love you, too.  Then I’d have to come into work and see her again and hope, hope that maybe we had the same dream and today would be the day something would happen. 

The way she starts laughing before her eyes are all the way open in the morning.  How did I think I could ever live without that?  I don’t have to live without anything anymore.  God, she is sweetness and honey and I never thought I could love her more than I did when I couldn't even touch her, but I do.  When I look in her eyes now, I see myself, I see me.  I made her look like that.  What we are together, it’s not just for me, it’s for her, too.  This is just the beginning of whatever we want it to be.  Everything's possible.

I’m never going back to that feeling.  I don’t have to pretend, I don’t have to hide and she’s really with me.  Really with me and I love her so much and I’m never ever going to forget how long I just ached for her.  Because if I keep a little bit of that in my head I’ll never just pretend to listen or take even the smallest thing for granted.  I’ll never let a single chance slip by, to tell her, to show her, to make sure she knows.  I need to make sure right now, she needs to know and why be cool about it?  I had to hide this for so fucking long and now I don’t have to.  It’s really, really over and this is us, now.  It’s real and true and now I feel filled up all the time, so full I feel like I’m going to burst from it and she’s more than everything I ever wanted.  I am the luckiest son of a bitch that ever lived and she’s going to know it every single day, starting right now.